Always Use Protection 307
| Always Use Protection: A Teen's Guide to Safe Computing | |
| author | Dan Appleman |
| pages | 288 |
| publisher | Apress |
| rating | 10/10 |
| reviewer | Raymond Lodato |
| ISBN | 159059326X |
| summary | An excellent and realistic reference for teens and their parents/guardians about the potential hazards of computing. |
Dan Appleman knows how to talk to teenagers. He's made the presentation very logical, he keeps the chapters a reasonable length so a teenager won't feel overwhelmed, and he had a crew of teenagers review this book before it was published so that he knew they would understand it. Those adults who aren't technically adept will find it an easy read, too.
Always Use Protection is broken up into three main parts: Protecting Your Machine, Protecting Your Privacy, and Protecting Yourself. There is a fourth part with useful appendixes, also.
Protecting Your Machine goes through all of the gremlins that can bother your computer, how to get rid of them and how to prevent them from coming back. Viruses, Trojan horse programs, and worms are covered clearly. Not too much depth involved, but not too little either. Dan covers the ins and outs of the three main preventive measures: anti-virus programs, firewalls, and system configuration and updates. He makes sure that his discussions relate to the types of programs that teenagers are likely to run: P2P software, online games, Instant Message clients, e-mail programs, and web browsers. He's careful to include other avenues of attack besides the Internet, such as infected floppies and CDs cut by well-meaning friends.
Always Use Protection explains how to determine which type of anti-virus programs are available and how to run them (using McAfee's VirusScan as an example), but puts the responsibility for deciding which one to use squarely in the reader's lap. Dan has made sure that he's not pushing any particular product over another. In fact, there were one or two places where I wished he'd just come right out and say I'd recommend blah-blah software, but he always said the reader should check the pros and cons of the possibilities and make their own decision.
Firewalls are discussed in detail, as well as their possibly unintended consequences (an online game refuses to run because a critical port is being blocked by the firewall, for example). He does state that if you're on a network behind a router, you may not need a firewall. This is my only disagreement with Dan. I believe a personal firewall should be on each and every machine, regardless of how it connects. It will protect not only the machine itself, but make it harder for the machine to attack others.
Software updates are probably one of the most under-utilized options in the home. News items in papers and on the web speak frequently about how such-and-such a virus got into machines mainly because security updates available from the manufacturer for months were simply not installed. Dan makes sure that the reader understands how shortsighted that approach really is. The updates are usually free, and just take a little time to download and install. Always Use Protection explains exactly how to do that and why it's a good thing.
The configuration chapter describes many little tweaks available to harden your browser and e-mail reader. Many people are not aware of the number of 'dials' they can play with (and if they were, they'd probably be overwhelmed), but this chapter zeroes in on the most important ones.
If this book was only chapter 9 - What to Do When You've Been Hit - it would still be worth the cover price. In this chapter, Dan gives a careful, step-by-step menu of what you can and should do to recover as much as you possibly can, eradicate the malware that is causing the problem, and get your system back to a usable state. It's the one chapter he says you shouldn't read front-to-back, but follow the links (if you see this, go to this section) like one of those make-your-own-ending books. I have this one bookmarked for future reference.
The next four chapters form Part II - Protecting Your Privacy. In here, Dan explains the various ways your personal information can be gleaned, mostly from a user innocently filling in a form supplied by a con artist. He talks about identity theft and what it means to a teenager. The need for good passwords is clearly discussed, but he acknowledges that most people won't use strong enough ones. Therefore, he promotes a simple plan with three passwords (high, medium, and low-security) that will work in most cases. He ends off this part with a good treatise on cookies of all forms, and how to turn off the worst ones.
Finally, he talks about protecting yourself in chat rooms and from common scams. While there is a lot of press about teenagers being lured by scoundrels in chat rooms, Dan notices that the actual statistics are very low. Regardless of the statistics, he gives extremely good advice about how to use a chat room safely (mostly involving lying about almost any bit of personal information you might be asked for).
The appendixes have good summary information for teens and adults, and have a special appendix just for the parents. It give good advice to make sure your teenager is willing to come to you for question without worrying about losing online privileges.
All in all, Always Use Protection should be read by every parent and, hopefully, by their kids. I'm going to try to get my 15- and 13-year old to read it (Good luck to me! You should have seen the arguments to get them to finish their summer reading!) I liked the approach, the content, and the presentation so well, I had to rate this a 10.
You can purchase Always use Protection: A Teen's Guide to Safe Computing from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
As the parent of two teens who do amazing things (Score:3, Interesting)
Is your son a computer hacker? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not to say that it's a bad book or the review is flawed, though some of the comments would tend to tell me that the reviewer isn't as "computer savvy" as I might like in a person reviewing a book. A properly configured border firewall, for example, will protect systems behind it. That says nothing of the duties of many of those "personal firewall" applications that are actually much more than firewalls (spam filters, scumware/spyware/adware scanner/filters, etc).
I just found it amusing that the adequacy.org article was the first thing I thought of when reading this review...
Re:Well... (Score:2, Interesting)
As a teenager (14) who uses computers... (Score:5, Interesting)
Infected CDs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Has anybody ever gotten a virus from an infected CD?
Re:Teenagers? (Score:2, Interesting)
How about households with both parents working and the teenage child(ren) unsupervised from 3:00 - 6:00 pm after school? You don't think there is a reason for them specifically to learn about AV protection etc.? And while this book is aimed at teenagers, I'm sure it would be good for less computer literate adults.
Move back to DOS (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the BBSs that I used to use, would allow us to drop into an MPM shell, but you would have to answer a questions, "what is the name of the debugger?"
stereotypes (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Do you remember being a teenager? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
And for those of us not running Windows?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is your son a computer hacker? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm impressed that anyone could truly be that ignorant (and I do in-home tech work!). Are you sure it isn't meant as a joke? Quake as a hacker program... *snickers*Okay, now I'm thoroughly convinced it's a joke...
Online games and firewalls - Halo (Score:3, Interesting)
This reminded me of a recent disturbing incidedent at a LAN party I was hosting. We were playing Halo, behind my router, configured with a firewall and NAT; DMZ was off, one of my guests was hosting the server so no unintentional rule in the firewall would've been forwarding him traffic from the outside (he was also DHCPed, further reducing the likelyhood, AND I checked the rules later), we had set up no additional firewall rules to allow people on the internet to connect to the Halo server, to our surprize and my chagrin, people outside my router were able to connect to the server apparently being run inside my LAN, somehow bypassing my firewall. Everyone at my LAN party has a good bit of network and computer experience, but this left us scratching our heads. We had always assumed Halo did the standard client-server thing and waited for clients to connect to it on some port. To this day I'm still not quite sure how it happens; my best guess is Halo connects to some master server which instructs to connect to the client machines, or (more likely) clients connect to the master server and data flows through it on its way to the game server. Anyone know for sure how Halo's doing this?
When you've been hit (Score:3, Interesting)
The only way to a secure system after being hit is recovering your data, formatting the drive and reinstalling. If your machine has been compromised, there can *always* be other malware installed through the backdoors it opened. If the chapter is only about the above, without the reinstall part, it's not doing the readers much good.
what DOS will and won't do (Score:1, Interesting)
Teens don't care (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm 13. I know how these people work. I've seen cases that belong on Computer Stupidities [rinkworks.com], like attempting to reconnect a mouse+keyboard and electrocuting themselves (bent pins). They have no idea about keeping their computers free of spy/adware. ("viruses"...) They expect their computers to work perfectly, or assume everything included in Windows XP will keep them free of virii/spyware/adware. I look at my classmates' home computers and they are destroyed to the point where a format/reinstall would be a quicker fix. These people don't think they are going to encounter the things discussed in the book and therefore don't bother with anything.
Re:Is your son a computer hacker? (Score:1, Interesting)
A few additional comments (Score:5, Interesting)
Teen's don't care... Many don't. But they, like home users in general are have huge problems with regards to security. So what do we do? Just give up? We (and this includes all the knowledgeable teens) have to do what we can to improve the situation. This book is my contribution to the effort.
Better taught in person than from a book... I agree, but many parents don't know enough to teach security - their kids know more than they do. In those cases I actually suggest flipping it around: teens, teach your parents! I've met a number of teens who have thier security act together - more who just think they do:-)
Parents and grandparents are a better audience for the book... I've gotten some very nice emails from adults and seniors who find it very readable.
The title is a gimmick... Sure, but you'll remember it, right? Actually, the title was the idea of a group of teens. I never would have come up with it on my own.
For more info including the book's introductions visit http://www.alwaysuseprotection.com/ [alwaysuseprotection.com]
Re:Infected CDs? (Score:3, Interesting)
(Actually, it could be argued that AutoRun copy-protection software on an audio CD may be a virus.)
Re:Infected CDs? (Score:2, Interesting)
(No, the other images weren't porn...)
Users and firewalls don't mix (Score:4, Interesting)